At the outset, it is important to be clear, once more, about two points. First, that the NPG is being presented here neither as a normative new paradigm to supersede PA and the NPM nor as “the one best way” (Alford and Hughes 2008) to respond to the challenges of public policy implementation and public services delivery in the twenty-first century. Rather it is being presented both as a conceptual tool with the potential to assist our understanding of the complexity of these challenges and as a reflection of the reality of the working lives of public managers today